Globally, it is clear that text messaging services will continue to be a large part of daily activities because it is projected to be a $363 million industry by 2017, according to Infonetics. SMS has been a part of cell phone technology since its early days, and while it has largely been used for personal use, its potential in the business market is incredibly high.
If nearly 10 trillion SMS/MMS messages are read around the world each year, businesses that implement an SMS marketing strategy can see an uptick in sales. However, James Citron, CEO of Mogreet told Forbes that "many marketers have yet to embrace this new reality."
Even though 55 percent of businesses have mobile-friendly websites or applications, customers want to engage with specific companies. This can happen with an SMS platform.
Over in the United Kingdom, text messaging is more rampant than social media, which has become a large market in itself in recent years, according to eMarketer. A study from Pure360 showed that there were 22 million social network activities whereas 45 million SMS were sent and received—totaling more than two times the traffic.
Even though email marketing is a platform many companies use to get in touch with their targeted audience, most of them are opened for desktop computers anyway, not mobile devices.
In the United States, about 91 percent of American adults own a mobile device, on top of the fact that 90 percent of users send text messages. So, why do organizations neglect to take advantage of this opportunity?
Unlike other marketing campaigns that can be expensive to coordinate with developers, investing in an SMS strategy is much simpler. Companies like Swift SMS Gateway possess a strong staff with years of experience to make the program as easy as possible. With so many active cell phones out there, half the work is already completed.